Heather Yakin: Father's rape conviction stands after panel review

The review committee opinion is in on the Daryl Kelly Sr. rape case: despite the daughter's recantation, there's no basis to disturb his conviction.

Heather Yakin

The review committee opinion is in on the Daryl Kelly Sr. rape case: despite the daughter's recantation, there's no basis to disturb his conviction.

The committee — 10 veteran prosecutors who are part of the District Attorneys Association of New York State — launched their investigation of the Newburgh man's case at the request of Orange County District Attorney Frank Phillips. The probe was triggered by a letter the girl wrote to Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2012, asking for a pardon or clemency. Kelly, 54, is serving 20 to 40 years in prison on his 1998 conviction before Orange County Court Judge Nicholas De Rosa.

The girl was 8 in 1997 when she told her mother that Kelly, her father, had raped and sodomized her. There was a second assault before her mother and grandmother took her to a health center. The girl gave medical staff and investigators details of pain, taste and choreography that, the experts opined, a child so young would not know unless she had experienced it.

Kelly denied the abuse; when a detective used the tactic of confronting him with nonexistent "evidence" of his fingerprints on the girl's thigh and DNA on her face, Kelly offered outlandish claims that his wife planted the evidence as he slept to frame him.

The girl testified about the abuse at trial; months later, after unsupervised visitation with her mother started, she recanted. De Rosa concluded that the girl told the truth at trial, and her recantation was "the product of efforts to manipulate (her) by her mother and others.".

At trial, Kelly claimed distinguished Naval service, involvement in a top-secret mission and earning a Purple Heart. A later check of his military record, aided by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, showed no honors, medals or commendations, and service solely in the U.S.

The DA's committee reviewed thousands of pages of documents and interviewed all of the players in the case. They found no misconduct.

The girl, they wrote, is now a poised, well-adjusted 24-year-old woman who extricated herself from the dysfunction and chaos of her childhood. They found her sincere in her belief that the abuse never happened, but cannot explain how she otherwise knew such details or why she would have started or maintained such a claim through trial.

"In sum, at sentencing Judge De Rosa labeled the defendant a 'pathological liar' and an assessment of this matter supports the accuracy of that statement," the committee's report reads. "The Committee can conclude only that the defendant is incredible in every way, about every topic."

The committee found him grandiose and impervious to logical contradictions in his own story.

The committee saw Kelly as the prosecution, the judge and the jury did: as "an ego-inflated narcissist."

The report is online at orangecountygov.com on the District Attorney page.

Orange County Court news on Twitter@HeatherYakin845

hyakin@th-record.com

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